After the pull request submitted to Ansible for the devel branch is
accepted and merged, the following instructions will help you create a
pull request to backport the change to a previous stable branch.

Note

These instructions assume that stable-2.5 is the targeted release
branch for the backport.

Note

These instructions assume that https://github.com/ansible/ansible.git
is configured as a gitremote named upstream. If you do not use
a gitremote named upstream, adjust the instructions accordingly.

Note

These instructions assume that https://github.com/<yourgithubaccount>/ansible.git
is configured as a gitremote named origin. If you do not use
a gitremote named origin, adjust the instructions accordingly.

Submit the pull request for backport/2.5/[PR_NUMBER_FROM_DEVEL]
against the stable-2.5 branch

Note

The choice to use backport/2.5/[PR_NUMBER_FROM_DEVEL] as the
name for the feature branch is somewhat arbitrary, but conveys meaning
about the purpose of that branch. It is not required to use this format,
but it can be helpful, especially when making multiple backport PRs for
multiple stable branches.

Note

If you prefer, you can use CPython’s cherry-picker tool to backport commits
from devel to stable branches in Ansible. Take a look at the cherry-picker
documentation for
details on installing, configuring, and using it.

Some modules have no community maintainers assigned. In this case, the maintainer is listed as $team_ansible. Ultimately, it’s our goal to have at least one community maintainer for every module.

The maintainer’s job is to review PRs and decide whether that PR should be merged (shipit) or revised (needs_revision).

The ultimate goal of any pull request is to reach shipit status, where the Core team then decides whether the PR is ready to be merged. Not every PR that reaches the shipit label is actually ready to be merged, but the better our reviewers are, and the better our guidelines are, the more likely it will be that a PR that reaches shipit will be mergeable.

Ansibullbot runs continuously. You can generally expect to see changes to your issue or pull request within thirty minutes. Ansibullbot examines every open pull request in the repositories, and enforces state roughly according to the following workflow:

If a pull request has no workflow labels, it’s considered new. Files in the pull request are identified, and the maintainers of those files are pinged by the bot, along with instructions on how to review the pull request. (Note: sometimes we strip labels from a pull request to “reboot” this process.)

If the module maintainer is not $team_ansible, the pull request then goes into the community_review state.

If the module maintainer is $team_ansible, the pull request then goes into the core_review state (and probably sits for a while).

If the pull request is in community_review and has received comments from the maintainer:

If the maintainer says shipit, the pull request is labeled shipit, whereupon the Core team assesses it for final merge.

If the maintainer says needs_info, the pull request is labeled needs_info and the submitter is asked for more info.

If the maintainer says needs_revision, the pull request is labeled needs_revision and the submitter is asked to fix some things.

If the submitter says ready_for_review, the pull request is put back into community_review or core_review and the maintainer is notified that the pull request is ready to be reviewed again.

If the pull request is labeled needs_revision or needs_info and the submitter has not responded lately:

The submitter is first politely pinged after two weeks, pinged again after two more weeks and labeled pending action, and the issue or pull request will be closed two weeks after that.

If the submitter responds at all, the clock is reset.

If the pull request is labeled community_review and the reviewer has not responded lately:

The reviewer is first politely pinged after two weeks, pinged again after two more weeks and labeled pending_action, and then may be reassigned to $team_ansible or labeled core_review, or often the submitter of the pull request is asked to step up as a maintainer.

If Shippable tests fail, or if the code is not able to be merged, the pull request is automatically put into needs_revision along with a message to the submitter explaining why.

There are corner cases and frequent refinements, but this is the workflow in general.

backport: this is applied automatically if the PR is requested against any branch that is not devel. The bot immediately assigns the labels backport and core_review.

bugfix_pull_request: applied by the bot based on the templatized description of the PR.

cloud: applied by the bot based on the paths of the modified files.

docs_pull_request: applied by the bot based on the templatized description of the PR.

easyfix: applied manually, inconsistently used but sometimes useful.

feature_pull_request: applied by the bot based on the templatized description of the PR.

networking: applied by the bot based on the paths of the modified files.

owner_pr: largely deprecated. Formerly workflow, now informational. Originally, PRs submitted by the maintainer would automatically go to shipit based on this label. If the submitter is also a maintainer, we notify the other maintainers and still require one of the maintainers (including the submitter) to give a shipit.

pending_action: applied by the bot to PRs that are not moving. Reviewed every couple of weeks by the community team, who tries to figure out the appropriate action (closure, asking for new maintainers, etc).